Looking down upon the little town from the skylight of the Capitol, Harriet Martineau could plainly discern the “seven theoretical avenues,” but with the exception of Pennsylvania, all were “bare and forlorn,” and the city which has become one of the most beautiful and impressive in the world could then present to the naked eye only “a few mean houses dotted about, the sheds of the navy yard on one bank of the Potomac, and three or four villas on the other.”[27] With the streets full of ruts, the sidewalks dotted with pools of muddy water, or in places overgrown with grass, with cows pasturing on many of the streets now lined with elegant homes, and challenging the right of way with Marshall or Clay or Jackson, it is not surprising that foreigners, even as late as the Thirties, were moved to imitate the sarcasm of Tom Moore. The difficulties of locomotion kept the pedestrian’s eyes upon the ground, and the inconveniences, in making calls, of crossing ditches and stiles, and walking alternately upon grass and pavement, and striking across fields to reach a street, were more noticeable than the noble trees that lined the avenues.[28] Wretched enough in the daytime, the poorly lighted streets at night were utterly impossible. “As for lights,” wrote a contemporary, “if the pedestrian did not provide and carry his own, he was in danger of discovering every mud-hole and sounding its depths.”[29] More nearly possible to the fastidious were the narrower streets of Georgetown, with its more imposing and interesting houses, and more select society, where many of the statesmen lived, and not a few of the Government clerks, who rode horseback to the departments in the morning. Even in the Thirties there were many beautiful drives and walks in the vicinity of Washington, and a few houses that were impressive to even the most critical English visitor. Visible for many miles, and easily seen from the town, loomed the pillared white mansion of Arlington, then the home of George Washington Custis, to which many of the aristocrats of the capital frequently found their way. There, during the Jacksonian period, Robert E. Lee, standing in the room, whence, across the river, he could see the Capitol building, was united in marriage to the daughter of the house.[30] Within the city the most imposing mansions were those of John Tayloe, at Eighteenth Street and New York Avenue, designed by Thornton, and even then rich in political and social memories,[31] and the handsome residence of John Van Ness, the work of Latrobe, built at a cost of sixty thousand dollars to make a fit setting for the charm and beauty of Marcia Burns, at the foot of Seventeenth Street, on the banks of the Potomac. From the doorstep the master and his guests could watch the ships from across the sea mooring to the docks of Alexandria, and the merchantmen, bound for the port of Georgetown, laden with the riches of the West Indies.